An Invitation to Song

The Young Bolshevik Party of Russia has opened a campaign to abolish grammar. They hold that grammar rules deaden every creative effort among the young.

’Ere’s noos! ’Ere’s ’ope! ’Ere’s joy for poits, dumb
Thro’ weary years, becos, when songs ’ave come
They died unsung, ’cos them grammatic rools
Gagged minstrelsy; an’ the loud laugh of fools
Done genius in, while muses, fair but frail
’Cos of their accent, was beyond the pale.

Oh, them proud songs that ’ad no chance to live
Becos the verb don’t fit the nom’native!
Oh, them sweet bards, with fancy flowin’ free,
Oo’s genders, moods an’ tenses don’t agree!
An’ so their muses, with the ’arp strings bust,
’Ave got to take in washin’ for a crust.

I’ve sung rare things, I ’ave, of life an’ love,
Fit for the ’earin’ of the gawds above;
To see the dilly tanties cut up rough
An’ call my efferts rood, unculcher’d stuff.
Culcher? The blighters dunno where to look.
Culcher ain’t prisoned in a grammar book.

Look ’ere. A rose by any other name,
As Shakespeare tells a bloke, would smell the same.
An’ Shakespeare knoo. He never stopped to turn
The dictionary over for to learn
The meanin’ of a word; but in it went;
An’ mugs were left to find out wot ’e meant.

I’ve ’eard a grey thrush pipin’ in a tree,
’E never stopped to think the verb to be
Should take the same case after as before.
’E sung. ’E poured out all the thrush’s lore
Fearless an’ flutin’ free; an’ never give
A dam about the split infinitive.

So, blokes, ’ere’s ’ope! Choon up yer lyres with me,
An’ so pour out yer souls in verse that free —
Not free from rhyme or rhythm, but the rools
That some schoolmaster made to govern fools.
Sing ’igh, you coots! Chuck grammar to the dogs!
Embrace yer muse, an’ snout the pedagogues!